An artist walks into the glass room and takes a seat. Across from him is a dashing young fellow who starts recording. The reporter asks him about his childhood artwork, “What was the first thing you ever drew?”
He feels memories wash over him, whisking him off to another time, another place…
“Probably a scuffed version of the family portrait. I did not draw very well as a child, so they all looked like little demented stick figures with these happy little smiles. I didn’t know how to spell either, yet I still insisted on labeling every single drawing. So I had my grandma’s dog, Lucky, spelled Luke, because apparently that’s how ‘little me’ thought Lucky was spelled. And Floyd, the cat, was called F, l, O,
D, without the Y, Flod.”
His name is Henry Cullen and he’s here today to speak about his past and describe how it has influenced him and his art career.
“It’s important to be with a lot of people who respect you and are good friends to you, so
that you’re not going to deviate towards a life of sadness,” Cullen replies when asked about his personal life.
Henry recalls his former cat, Floyd, fondly. He feels that Floyd has had a great influence on his beliefs and who Henry is.
“I think he taught me what being a good friend is. He was always there for me. He’s a good
kitty,” said Cullen.
Henry believes that friends should be kind and supportive of each other. He wants his friends to have similar ideals as he responded when asked if he has “found the good ones,” a phrase Cullen’s mother would tell him every day before school.
“I’ve tried my best to find people who share common ideals, which are mainly, you know,
being kind, being accepting, you know, just being good friends to one another and always supporting each other. Also they must be funny, that this is something that is mandatory,” Henry explained.
Henry Cullen has great ambitions for his artistic career. He talks about colleges where he would
like to study art. Cullen hopes to one day sell an art piece.
“I’d like to see if I can apply to an art school, either the Art Institute of Chicago, or one in
Minnesota that I always blank on the name,” Cullen shared. “I’d like to take more art classes
and see what different mediums and experimentations are like, and maybe one day sell a piece of artwork.”
Cullen feels that his style is cartoon-like. He tends to draw animals which he thinks is because of shows he grew up watching. While he has not had much success drawing people, Henry vows to keep working at it.
“It’s very cartoony. I grew up on PBS Kids and Wild Kratts, and I think that’s also a source of
my love for animals. I really like drawing cats. They’re very cute, and I have my own cats. I have
attempted to draw people in the past few weeks, and it’s not worked so far, but I will keep trying,” Cullen says.
Henry has been greatly influenced by his mother’s work. She is part of what inspires him to draw, and he continues to be in awe of her work.
“’She does a lot of landscape portraits, but abstract landscape portraits, so she draws in all lines, and I think they’re super cool. I don’t really know how she does it, but she definitely hurts her hands doing it,
because she’s constantly making the same stroke over and over again. It’s really mesmerizing,” Henry said.
Henry is very passionate about his work. He is always working to improve his artistic ability.
Henry tries his best to create something profound. Henry wants people to see this when
they look at his work.
“I want them to see a little artist just trying their best, and eventually something with an actually good reference, like, if I could get anatomy down, that would be great. I want them to see that I’m trying my hardest, and I really love what I do, not just a random scribble on a page. Athough that can be considered artwork.”